


a son, a father, a city

by captainhurricane



Series: every city has to fall [4]
Category: BioShock, BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen, a teeny-tiny bit spoilery, but honestly my writing-style is super vague anyway so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jack ryan arrives to rapture / booker dewitt arrives to columbia. shit happens. darkness and light are met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a son, a father, a city

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah idk. another one of those second person-fics because why the fuck not. also comparisons are fun. italics are booker, other is jack.

the bathysphere slides closer, ever closer.  _all goods things flow into the city._  you sit there, confused and read the words as you slip under them. the bathysphere rumbles around you. there is a city underneath the ocean, how odd, you think. how marvellous. you stare out of the bathysphere and into the blinking lights and the soft hymn of the water. 

_[ up, up you go into the light that sings with heavenly voices and into the clouds. the water sloshes around your ankles as you walk forward, heart heavy and scars inside and outside. this is no place for you, not among men and women in their white robes, with their faces turned upwards and offering their hands to greet you. a city in the sky, how obnoxious, you think and frown. the light hurts your eyes. ]_

darkness welcomes you and a voice who introduces himself as Atlas, the Irish twang the only thing in the darkness that does not seem to wish you harm and you latch onto it, wait for the tell-tale click of another message coming, of Atlas telling you to run, to hide, to fight, to go there and go here onwards the invisible goal. why, you ask. Atlas has no answer, only desperation and familiarity, something to hold onto as the former occupants of the city appear and disappear from their hiding places, from the ruins that their city has become. you’re an intruder here, yet your footsteps seem to belong into the emptied halls. 

_[ find the girl, they said. and the girl you will find. it’s not the one with pigtails and sitting beside her mother on a picnic. not the angel of the city in the sky, the one with golden skin and wings larger than the sky. the girl in her tower and up, up you go. you draw heads and the ball with the seventy-seven on it. you don’t really stop to think, to give into the fact that this is not your place, not your place at all. you belong in streetlights and war, in- you press your fingertips against your nose and they come back bloody. the two, the man and the woman with identical clothes, the ones you think might just be objects of your imagination, they’re like tricksters but in a way more tangible than the dreaminess of the city in the sky. ]_

would you kindly, 

would you kindly

Atlas whispers to you, the voice that offered comfort when you clawed and fought your way through the city under the sea. The same voice now lowers down to a menacing growl, then back to desperation, to hunger, to anger. 

would you kindly

and you  _do_

_[ it is not easy to find someone who does not wish to be found- but then it’s too easy because it was always meant to be. the girl looks at you with eyes no girl ever should have, smiles like a child but speaks like a god. you’re afraid of her. for the third time in your life, you’re afraid. she asks you that. you answer truthfully and wonder how such a child could produce such a sad smile. ]_

all good things flow into the city. this city, the city of pipes and tunnels creaking and rusting under the weight of the ocean. the city of people drugged and sliced beyond recognition. the city of dead-alive little girls and their protectors who stopped being mortal men long ago, of family feuds and men who thought too much and women who struggled in vain. indeed, you think. maybe you go back up, up and pop out of the bathysphere and drown the world in flames, just to make up for the horror, the empty hole that is you. maybe you go up, up and keep it all inside, live life to the end just to see those same dead-alive little girls live and grow. maybe you just stay. the darkness curls around you, the smooth jazz ringing from some half-broken gramophone somewhere. you’ve been here before and maybe you always were meant to be. 

_[the water burns your lungs. her face drifts into blackness but you know it’s right. it has to be right. the lights of the lighthouses flicker beneath your eyelids. your last thought is of pathways and her. always her.]_


End file.
